Pearl Jam

Pearl Jam's debut, Ten, is a seamless merging of hard rock riffs and punk ideals delivered with growling conviction by frontman Eddie Vedder. With an emphasis on anthemic, stadium-sized hooks, the songs "Alive," "Evenflow" and "Jeremy" clicked with radio listeners and MTV watchers bored with hair bands. Ten marks one of the band's strongest releases to date.

All hail seattle's new sons of Zeppelin, still kicking and shrieking with a whole lotta moxie.
Soundgarden bolts out of the starting gate on Badmotorfinger with a nifty high-speed
inversion of the "How Many More Times" riff on "Rusty Cage." It then proceeds to upend the
entire Zep-lick apple cart, stitching melodic fragments and jarring time signatures together
with Frankenstein enthusiasm and hauling the results over hot guitar coals. "Jesu... More >

In life, abuse justifies melodrama; in music, riffs work better ("Once," "Even Flow") (Grade - **)